PART XIII
Reading edition
WHAT IS ART?
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I Time and labour spent on art—Lives stunted in its service—Morality sacrificed to, and anger justified by, art—The rehearsal of an opera described.
CHAPTER II Does art compensate for so much evil?—What is art?—Confusion of opinions—Is it “that which produces beauty”?—The word “beauty” in Russian—Chaos in esthetics.
CHAPTER III Summary of various esthetic theories and definitions, from Baumgarten to the present day.
CHAPTER IV Definitions of art founded on beauty—Taste not definable—A clear definition needed to enable us to recognise works of art.
CHAPTER V Definitions not founded on beauty—Tolstoy’s definition—The extent and necessity of art—How people in the past distinguished good from bad in art.
CHAPTER VI How art for pleasure came into esteem—Religions indicate what is considered good and bad—Church Christianity—The Renaissance—Scepticism of the upper classes—They confound beauty with goodness.
CHAPTER VII An esthetic theory framed to suit the view of life of the ruling classes.
CHAPTER VIII Who have adopted it?—Real art needful for all men—Our art too expensive, too unintelligible, and too harmful, for the masses—“The elect” in art.
CHAPTER IX Perversion of our art—It has lost its natural subject-matter—Has no flow of fresh feeling—Transmits chiefly three base emotions.
CHAPTER X Loss of comprehensibility—Decadent art—Recent French art—Have we a right to say it is bad, and that what we like is good art?—The highest art has always been comprehensible to normal people—What fails to infect normal people is not art.
CHAPTER XI Counterfeits of art produced by: Borrowing; Imitating; Arranging effects; Creating interest—Qualifications needful for the production of real works of art, and those sufficient for production of counterfeits.
CHAPTER XII Causes of production of counterfeits—Professionalism—Criticism—Schools of art.
CHAPTER XIII Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelung” a type of counterfeit art—Its success, and the reasons thereof.
CHAPTER XIV Truths fatal to preconceived views are not readily recognised—Proportion of works of art to counterfeits—Perversion of taste and incapacity to recognise art—Examples.
CHAPTER XV The quality of art, considered apart from its subject-matter—The sign of art: infectiousness—Incomprehensible to those whose taste is perverted—Conditions of infection: Individuality; Clearness; Sincerity.
CHAPTER XVI The quality of art, considered according to its subject-matter—The better the feeling the better the art—The cultured crowd—The religious perception of our age—New ideals put fresh demands to art—Art unites—Religious art—Universal art—Both co-operate to one result—The new appraisement of art—Bad art—Examples of art—How to test a work claiming to be art.
CHAPTER XVII Results of absence of true art—Results of perversion of art: Labour and lives spent on what is useless and harmful—The abnormal life of the rich—Perplexity of children and plain folk—Confusion of right and wrong—Nietzsche and Redbeard—Superstition, Patriotism, and Sensuality.
CHAPTER XVIII The purpose of human life is the brotherly union of man—Art must be guided by this perception.
CHAPTER XIX The art of the future not the possession of a select minority, but a means toward perfection and unity.
CHAPTER XX The connection between science and art—The mendacious sciences; the trivial sciences—Science should deal with the great problems of human life and serve as a basis for art.
APPENDICES
Appendix I. Translations of French poems and prose quoted in Chap. X of What is Art?
Appendix II. Translation from Mallarmé.
Appendix III. Poems by Henri de Régnier, Vielé-Griffin, Verhaeren, Moréas, and Montesquiou, with translations.
Appendix IV. The contents of Wagner’s Nibelungen Ring.
(This Table of Contents is compiled by the translator.)